Welcome to Web Accessibility. I'm Peter Mosinskis from CSU Channel Islands and today we're 
going to talk about what it takes to make websites accessible. The goals of today's 
workshop are first to build awareness of concepts surrounding accessibility and 
second to develop the basic skills required to evaluate and repair web pages to make sure 
that they are accessible. How we will accomplish the goals in this workshop is first taking a 
look at the user experience; this will give us some insight into why it is important for us 
to consider accessibility when building web pages. Another one of the reasons why we're 
concerned about accessibility are the legal issues that impact our campus, so we'll take a look 
at that. Then we'll dive into the hands-on portion in which we will evaluate a web page based 
on the 16 guidelines that are defined by Section 508. We'll talk a little bit more about 
what Section 508 is later on in the presentation. Finally, we will wrap up with a brief 
overview of some of the other accessibility check tools and resources that are available to 
you on campus and out on the web. So let's get started. First of all, we'd like you to take a 
look at the Keeping Web Accessibility in Mind video that is available at WWW.WebAim.org; 
this video is a good introduction to the challenges that persons with disabilities 
face when attempting to use the web. So please pause the playback of this recording now 
and go to that website and view the Keeping Web Accessibility in Mind presentation. Come back 
once that's completed. So as you could see from the Keeping Web Accessibility in Mind video 
there really are a number of challenges that make it difficult for persons with 
disabilities to access information on the web. The kinds of techniques that you'll 
be learning about today to address accessibility will help address a wide range of 
disabilities including visual, hearing, physical or motor, cognitive and neurological as 
well as combination disabilities. Notice that within each category of disability 
there really is a wide range of the kinds of disabilities a person might experience. So 
someone that has issues with color blindness is probably going to have slightly different 
problems accessing the web than a person that has low vision or is blind. However, the 
techniques that we'll be using to address accessibility will help the entire range of 
disabilities that are presented here. Let's go over some of the legal issues that are related to 
accessibility and the work that we'll be doing today. There are some federal accessibility laws 
which apply accessibility concepts. However, there's only 1 that specifically discusses 
websites and web accessibility and that law is the Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 
1973. You can see from the diagram on the slide that Section 508 is very specific 
about what it means to be accessible where as the Americans with Disabilities Act 
and Section 504 are fairly broad in their definitions. California state Senate Bill 302 and the 
Chancellor's Office Executive Order 926 apply these federal laws to the CSU system and to 
CI specifically. So taken all together the combination of federal and state laws and CSU 
policies mean that we need to make sure that electronic information whether it's being 
presented on the web or in some other means is accessible from its inception as opposed to 
going back and repairing documents that are inaccessible from when they're created. And 
the Chancellor's Office has outlined a timeline for making sure that any new content that 
we're creating specifically after September 1st, 2007 must meet these requirements. At 
CI we've been working on making sure that we are in compliance with accessibility 
requirements since 2005 and we're doing pretty well. Let's talk about some of the benefits 
for CI for building websites in an accessible way. When you build an accessible website it 
means you won't have to address accessibility on it again. In addition, accessible websites 
are built according to modern web standards and thus this helps ensure that as new devices 
and emerging technology become available to students and employees that the web content 
that's being created will be available to them on those devices. So a website that's 
built accessibly according to what we're talking about today will work equally well and be 
equally as accessible whether its access from a desktop computer, a web-enabled 
smartphone or whatever new technology comes out. Not to mention that accessibility 
assists those with age related processes. Finally, there is the issue of risk management and 
it's not what many people want to hear but there are legal implications for insuring 
accessibility of websites at the university. So before we can actually go through and repair a 
website what we need to do is to get set up with a few tools, so we're gonna talk about the 
initial set of tools that we're going to need for web accessibility evaluation for 
this workshop. At the bare minimum you will need a plane text editor like Windows Notepad 
to be able to edit HTML code. In the case of today's workshop we'll be using Adobe Dreamweaver 
because Dreamweaver enables us to edit web pages without having to know very much HTML code at 
all. We'll also be using Firefox web browser because it is a free tool and also because it 
supports a very useful toolbar for accessibility testing called the Web Developer Extension that 
is provided by Chris Pederick for free at the URL that's presented. We'll also be using a 
tool called the Color Contrast Analyzer that is a desktop tool available for both Windows and 
Mac that is a free tool that will help us in our evaluation and repair. As I mentioned today 
we'll be using Adobe Dreamweaver for this workshop and it's important to note that what 
we'll be doing in Dreamweaver is essentially a set of shortcuts that is available for web 
content creators. This software creates HTML code for you behind the scenes and it creates it in 
an accessible way as long as you are following the steps that we're talking about today. 
What's important to note is that all web software has a similar set of shortcuts, they may be in 
different locations on different menus but most web software that is modern has this set of 
shortcuts for creating things in an accessible way. The website that we're going to be 
evaluating today is the Mouse College Soccer Program website. So before we can go any further 
we're going to do a little bit of set-up on our computer. First thing that we will need to do is 
to start Firefox. You can go to the Start menu, All Programs, Mozilla Firefox and start 
Firefox. Next we're going to go to WWW.ChrisPederick.com. And at this address we're going to 
download and install the Web Developer Extension for Firefox. Click on the link to download. 
And typically I will see a little pop-up window at the top of my Firefox window. I click on 
the Edit Options button. I will Allow Chris Pederick's domain. And from here, once again, I 
will click the Download link. And now I should be prompted with Software Installation 
window. I click Install Now. Once installation is completed click the Restart Firefox 
button. Now you'll notice across the top of your Firefox window you have a whole set of menus 
for the accessibility evaluation portion. We're gonna use a number of these menus as part of 
the web developer toolbar in our evaluation today. Okay, so now that we have Firefox open we 
also need to start up Adobe Dreamweaver, so go to your Start menu, choose All Programs and 
start Adobe Dreamweaver. Excellent. Before I can open my sample document I must retrieve 
the sample files for the workshop from the appropriate website. To retrieve the sample 
files for today's workshop press the Windows key on your keyboard and the letter E; this should 
open a My Computer window. In the address bar type in ftp.csuci.edu and press the 
Enter key. Next I would like you to drag the web accessibility 1 files folder from this folder on
to your desktop. So now I have a web accessibility 1 files folder on my desktop. Switch back into 
Adobe Dreamweaver. To open the sample file click File, Open and browse to the location where you 
downloaded your workshop files. We're going to open the Mouse Soccer.htm web page. Here is the 
Mouse Soccer web page; this is a website for a fictitious college that has a soccer program and we 
will be evaluating this web page for accessibility.